Chapter 17 #2
A chill crawled up my spine, icy dread pooling deep within my stomach. I’d faced death countless times, confronted monsters without flinching. Yet now, staring at those remains—bones picked clean and abandoned in forgotten darkness—I felt a very real sense of fear.
“Human remains,” Edward murmured, carefully stepping around the bones. “These tunnels must have been their last refuge.”
Logan’s voice was rough with anger and disgust. “Looks like it was a slaughter. Maybe lycans… or worse.”
I knelt slowly beside a skull, fingers trembling faintly as I studied the damage, claw and teeth marks gouged savagely deep into the bones. My stomach twisted, nausea rising bitterly in my throat.
Aidan spoke from behind, his voice quiet and tense. “These people didn’t stand a chance. Trapped, alone in the dark, waiting to die.”
I closed my eyes briefly, breath shuddering as it escaped from my lungs. My mind flashed unwillingly to the past, to my brother, dragged away into the dark. The memory surged through me, raw and painful, shaking my carefully built composure.
“Sera?” Logan’s voice was gentle, concerned, drawing me back.
I stood abruptly, forcing steel into my spine, the mask of cold indifference back in place.
“I’m fine,” I snapped harshly, irritation rising exponentially at my momentary weakness. “Let’s keep moving.”
Jamie came closer, his usually playful expression uncharacteristically sober. “It’s alright to be scared, lass. Hell, I am.”
I glared back at him, pride flaring defensively. “I’m not scared.”
Edward studied me quietly, his calm presence somehow grounding. “There’s no shame in it, Sera. It keeps us aware.”
My gaze flicked away briefly, throat tightening involuntarily.
As much as I hated admitting it, he was right.
I was afraid, not just of the danger lurking ahead, but of the memories, the nightmares stirred by the sight of those remains.
I’d been trained to hide fear, to bury weakness, but down here, beneath the earth, surrounded by death, my carefully built walls were beginning to crumble.
Logan moved forward again. “Stay together. We can’t afford distractions. Just because this happened a century ago doesn’t mean the danger has passed.”
Aidan nodded curtly, clearly shaken, but still just as determined as ever. “Agreed. Everyone be careful.”
We moved on, leaving behind the haunting remains, though their hollow stares seemed to follow us through the shadows. Unease wound through my ribs. Fear lingered stubbornly beneath my bravado, but I kept going, trying to ignore it.
Up ahead, a gentle hum vibrated faintly through the tunnel walls, soft but rhythmic, steady, growing gradually louder as we progressed. I raised a cautious hand as I gripped my blade tighter.
“You hear that?” Logan murmured, his gaze flicking toward Edward.
He paused briefly, head tilted carefully, then nodded. “Electrical. Steady vibration. Could be machinery.”
Logan moved closer, almost protectively. “Could be another trap.”
Edward nodded thoughtfully. “Careful now.”
We pressed slowly onward, emerging finally into a broader tunnel junction, dull lighting illuminating the chamber in a faint, muted glow. At the far side stood a row of large, battered generators, a bit beat up and rusted from decades underground, yet remarkably still humming faintly with power.
I moved in to take a look, eyes scanning the equipment carefully. “Solar-powered generators. It’s pretty old tech, pre-Collapse. They’ve kept running somehow.”
Jamie crouched beside one, studying it curiously. “Bloody impressive craftsmanship to keep going so long. Maybe someone rigged some panels topside, hidden from view, protected.”
Edward nodded slowly, clearly intrigued. “Could be remnants of an old encampment down here. Maybe survivors trying to hold out.”
Logan glanced warily around the junction. “Which means we might not be alone.”
Aidan limped forward guardedly. “We keep our eyes open, stay ready.”
We moved slowly past the generators, following cables along the walls deeper into the tunnel. Gradually, the corridor widened into a larger cavernous chamber, an open space clearly designed as an encampment.
Scattered around the cavern stood makeshift structures made of rusted sheet metal and wooden planks, as well as tarp-covered shelters. Abandoned cooking pots sat cold over long-extinguished fires and dirty rags of clothing hung from lines strung between crude support beams.
Edward moved toward the center of the encampment, kneeling to examine old supplies abandoned in a pile. “This wasn’t recent. This was used years ago at best.”
“What happened to them?” Logan asked, wariness written all over his tense frame.
I looked around, trying to guess for myself.
The supplies, the bedding, scattered belongings, everything looked like it had been abandoned abruptly.
It seemed much like the last human settlement I’d seen on the surface, desperate survivors clinging stubbornly to life, hoping against hope for salvation.
Only here, underground, beneath the earth, salvation clearly hadn’t come.
At the cavern’s far side, near an improvised barricade, Logan paused, crouching down. “Look. More bones. Lycan attack?”
Edward stepped carefully closer, his brow furrowing. “Hard to say. Whatever it was, they put up a fight.”
I knelt beside a set of bones, eyes squinting in quiet horror, taking in the claw and teeth marks gouged deep into them. “Lycans, definitely. These people didn’t stand a chance.”
Scanning the scattered debris carefully, my training enabled me to notice details others might miss. A faint metallic glint caught my eye beneath a pile of decaying fabric and rusted equipment, partially hidden near a makeshift table.
I knelt down and brushed away layers of dust, revealing an old, battered communications device and a cracked laptop, both coated thickly with grime.
My heart skipped slightly with a spark of hope.
Maybe I could find something useful on this old equipment—maps, layouts of the tunnels, anything that might help us.
Edward noticed me first. “You find something, Sera?”
“Old equipment,” I murmured distractedly, already brushing off the keyboard and checking the power supply. “Might still be useful, if we can get it running.”
Logan approached, wary but curious, a quiet presence beside me. “Careful. Could be booby-trapped.”
“I know,” I replied tersely, irritation flaring briefly at the unnecessary caution. I gently lifted the laptop’s screen and pressed the power button, surprised when a dull glow flickered weakly to life beneath cracked glass. “Looks like it’s still getting some juice.”
Jamie knelt beside me, impressed despite the tension. “Those generators must’ve kept it alive. Bloody impressive.”
The computer stuttered and struggled, its systems sluggish and glitchy.
I navigated slowly through outdated screens and corrupted files.
Finally, a folder labeled Diary Entries caught my eye.
I hesitated briefly, curiosity warring with caution.
With anticipation buzzing through me, I clicked to open the file.
A video filled the grainy screen, the image blurred but visible enough. A man stared out from the screen, a tired, weary face, etched deeply with lines of exhaustion and grief. His eyes were dark, haunted, and disturbingly familiar.
“My name is Dr. Connor Reilly,” he spoke quietly, voice rough with exhaustion, pain etched clearly into every word.
“This is my personal log—day 482. The experiments continue to fail. Each mutation unstable, unsustainable. We’ve lost another test subject today.
” He exhaled roughly, running one hand through dark, disheveled hair.
“If we don’t succeed soon, humanity has no chance left whatsoever. ”
Aidan shifted beside me, surprise evident on his face. “That’s the Elder Lycan, isn’t it? But he’s… human.”
I nodded slowly, my heart hammering furiously as the realization settled heavily in my chest. “He wasn’t always a lycan then. He was human, just like us.”
Edward leaned in closer, studying the screen intently. “Listen—there’s more. Click on that one.”
The video shifted to another entry, clearly later.
Dr. Reilly appeared thinner, eyes sunken and shadowed, his voice colder and edged with desperation.
“Day 675. We’ve made progress, but the team is divided.
My wife, Elizabeth, believes we’ve crossed moral boundaries.
She thinks our research is unethical, and too dangerous.
” Anger flashed across his features, mingling with bitter hurt.
“She’s wrong. We’re humanity’s last hope. ”
In the next video, he appeared agitated, pacing restlessly.
“Elizabeth left today. She took a group of soldiers with her, fled Ireland entirely. Says she’ll form some sort of watchdog group to protect humanity from threats—including, apparently, me.
” Bitterness twisted his expression into something ugly, furious.
“She calls her little army ‘the Watch.’ A betrayal, nothing less.”
My breath caught as my throat tightening painfully. The Watch—my organization—founded by his wife? My entire world shifted suddenly, reorienting beneath my feet.
Edward stared at me, realization dawning sharply. “Sera… did you know that?”
I shook my head faintly, numb disbelief settling coldly in my chest. “I had no idea.”
The next video showed Dr. Reilly looking broken, hollow-eyed, and haunted by despair.
His voice trembled faintly with barely restrained grief.
“Day 823. No more willing subjects. No more research. Humanity rejected its only chance at survival.” His gaze darkened and he looked right at the camera.
“I won’t let everything we’ve built die in vain.
I’ll become the first stable subject myself and become humanity’s true protector. ”
Ominously, he raised a syringe filled with liquid, tenacity blazing in his gaze. “Maybe this is the path I was meant to take all along.”
The video flickered abruptly, cutting off into static. Silence settled heavily around us, broken only by my shallow breathing.
For a moment I thought it was finished, that is until a new entry sputtered onto the screen. This one was darker, the lighting worse, the face looming close to the camera nearly unrecognizable.
Dr. Connor Reilly’s features were twisted grotesquely, his skin pale, veins blackened and bulging unnaturally beneath the surface. His pupils were blown wide, his eyes no longer fully human and shining with feral insanity as his gravelly voice rasped out into the dim space around us.
In a distorted voice, thickened with anguish and rage, he spoke to us.
“It’s been five years since I took the injection and it was…
more potent than I anticipated. The mutation—it’s taken over.
I’m losing myself. Losing control.” His breathing quickened, becoming ragged and uneven, his words trembling with barely contained fury and panic.
“The others tried to stop me. I wanted to warn them, but I couldn’t.
I bit them and they became like me… changed.
Twisted. They were loyal once, but now…” He leaned closer, eyes wild, filled with dark madness.
“They’re mindless beasts, animals with no thought, no strategy.
And worse, the mutation is unstable. It kills them, burns them out within a few years, some much less time than that. They drop dead and leave me behind.”
My muscles tightened, dread pooling low in my gut as I absorbed his words. Around me, the others stood silent, each watching in horror as the recording continued.
Reilly’s expression hardened further, his voice turning bitter. “But me? I survived. Somehow the mutation stabilized in my body. I’m stronger, faster, but I can’t shift back. Trapped forever in this monstrous form, yet I still retain my mind. My intellect is intact.”
He paused, lips twisting into a bitter, humorless smirk. “They left me, all of them. My wife betrayed me, humanity abandoned me. And those wolf shifters, they’re the source of everything that went wrong in this world.”
His gaze burned with hatred now, pure venom dripping from each word. “I wanted to protect humanity, to destroy the wolves and save us. But now… I’ve been rejected by humans. Wolves betrayed everyone. I see it clearly now. None deserve survival, not wolves, not humans. I’ll end it all.”
A chill shivered through me at his dark declaration, dismay coiling around my throat as I watched. On screen, Reilly leaned in closer still, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper filled with venomous resolve.
“I’ve learned patience. Strategy. I’m the only lycan capable of rational thought, planning, foresight.
I’m bigger and stronger than any other. I’ve survived alone for decades, waiting, building.
And when I finally rise, neither wolves nor humans will stand a chance.
I’ll destroy them all. They’ll call me a monster, but they created me. Now they’ll suffer the consequences.”
The video crackled once more, before finally fading into darkness. A bated, heavy silence settled thickly over us, broken only by the harsh, uneven rasp of our breathing.
Edward’s voice finally cut through softly, steady despite the grim revelation. “He wanted to save humanity once, but he’s lost all humanity now. A strategic, intelligent lycan bent on total annihilation.”
Logan exhaled grimly. “And Declan’s trapped down here with him.”
Jamie shook his head slowly, disbelief clear in his voice. “We’ve seen dangerous foes, but nothing like this.”
Aidan spoke quietly. “He’s tactical, patient, and he’s been planning for decades. Whatever traps he’s laid down here, they’re going to be deadly.”
Everything had seemed to shift beneath my feet, my perspective suddenly altered completely.
My life’s mission—my very identity—felt twisted now.
I’d been trained by the Watch, sworn to protect humanity.
But the line between protector and monster had blurred dangerously.
I’d been hunting wolves as the greatest threat, but the true evil had once been human, and it still possessed human intellect.
I didn’t know what to do, what to think.
Logan turned toward me, his dark gaze intense and searching. “You alright?”
I nodded faintly, forcing a resolute calm into my voice that I didn’t fully feel. “Fine. Just… processing.”
Edward’s quiet voice steadied me slightly. “Whatever he once was, whatever his reasons, he’s beyond redemption now. He’s a threat to all of us.”
I straightened slowly, tightening my grip on my weapon, forcing steel back into my spine. “Then we stop him. Before it’s too late.”
Logan inclined his head, grim approval in his unwavering gaze. “Exactly.”